CH. XIII.] HISTORY OF THE CICADA. 



199 



amounted to about 1000; other writers reckoned 

 only 600. When this operation was completed, the 



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object of her existence seemed to be fulfilled, and 

 in a few days she dwindled away and died; the 

 whole period of the life of a single individual, from 

 her leaving the earth to her death, averaged from 

 twenty to twenty-five days. The life of the male 

 continued for nearly the same time. When the 

 cicadas first leave the earth, they are plump and full 

 of oily juices, so much so that they were made use 

 of in the manufacture of soap, but before their 

 death they were dried up to mere shells ; and they 

 have been seen to fly a few feet after one half of 

 their body was wasted away, and nothing remained 

 but the head, wings, and thorax. From the time 

 the eggs were deposited to the period of hatching, 

 was, as nearly as could be ascertained, sixty days, 

 and almost daily attention was given to the subject. 

 When first placed in the twigs, the eggs are about 

 the sixteenth of an inch in length, and the thickness 

 of a coarse hair, appearing through a small magni- 

 fying-glass of the shape and size of a grain of rye. 

 At the period of hatching they had increased about 

 one third in size. They are white and transparent 

 just before hatching, with a black spot on the large 

 end. They are placed very closely by the side of 

 each other, in an oblique direction to the line of the 

 twig. Several portions of the branch of an apple- 

 tree, full of the eggs ready to hatch, were placed on 

 a bowl of earth, with a glass tumbler inverted over 

 them, in the afternoon. By morning nearly a hun- 

 dred young cicadae were found in the earth, and a 

 .few on the surface, who had just left the woody 



